Britain's best driver's car 2015: Ariel Nomad, Ferrari 488 GTB and Porsche 911 GT3 RS

Frankel wasn’t too involved to care. “Hilarious on the throttle, but traction issues aren’t limited to slow corners,” he said. “A mid-engined car this light and soft should be like a missile from a rocket launcher out of the corners. Also too keen to lock the rear brakes on entry.” But even he noted that he “loved the steering, power delivery and whole attitude”.

And it’s the Nomad’s attitude, that joie de vivre, that would serve the Nomad best in the Dales, we suspected. Could I realistically sit and argue now that its suspension was as thoroughly developed for fast road and track use as a GT3 RS’s or 488 GTB’s? Not at all, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s good enough, because it has yet another purpose, and because the Nomad simply wants you to have fun. To quote not one of our testers but Jules from Pulp Fiction: “Personality goes a long way.” So it goes to the north with as strong a chance as anything.

Which leaves the Ferrari, headed to the Dales with the title of favourite tucked neatly under its arm. The notes we made in East Anglia are almost entirely full of praise for Ferrari’s new mid-engined supercar. “Effervescent where both Porsches seem stern,” said Cackett. “Light in the steering, but light all over – a facet that takes nothing from its grip and utterly fluid direction changes.” Frankel agreed: “A revelation, particularly considering the conditions,” he said. “Best Ferrari steering in years, massive pace, excellent balance, superb brakes and stupid amounts of torque absolutely everywhere.”

Indeed, what was notable about our experience of the Ferrari’s new turbocharged engine was not a single mention of lag or a flatness in the torque curve. The closest anyone came was Saunders, who found he “didn’t get the same confidence from the steering and throttle response as from the old atmo Ferarris” but who still reckoned it was “very, very fast and very exciting”.

To say that the 488 was in some ways a compromise between the two others – the Nomad’s ability on bumpy roads and the RS’s ability on a circuit – would be both misleading and selling it short. Flick its dampers into ‘bumpy road’ mode and it rides extremely well, while on a circuit there were those of us – me included – who found it just as entertaining as the Porsche, because of the astonishing docility of its handling. This is a car with just two turns between steering locks and 33 more horsepower than a McLaren F1, remember, yet it could be drifted through second and third-gear corners at Snetterton as easily as a Mazda MX-5. What Ferrari has achieved with this chassis is nothing short of astonishing.

It’s a car, then, I’m quite happy to find myself in for the journey from Norfolk to Yorkshire. These things shouldn’t count for much in the overall reckoning, but where the Porsche is jittery and the Nomad shivery, a modern mid-engined Ferrari is quite a compelling companion over long distances. And, after all, if we’re talking about driver’s cars, the willingness to drive them on more than just high days and holidays should count for something.

Away from busy motorways and between Yorkshire’s villages, it’s just as special. It’s left-hand drive but not so wide as to be unwieldy, and once you get acclimatised to the speed of its steering – which doesn’t take long, to be fair – you can thread it along with great fluidity. Out here, I quite like the fact that its engine is less antisocial than before, too – I know, I know, but go with me – and that there’s torque on demand. Enjoying fast cars on great roads is a considerably more conspicuous pastime than it once was, and to find that it’s no longer necessary to have 9000rpm with you at all times can give you one less thing to worry about.

Until, that is, you get into a car that wants 9000rpm at all times, which is what the Porsche appreciates. “God, I love this car,” Saunders stops to text on the way to the Dales, some time after he gets off the motorway but before his phone reception disappears like access to super-unleaded.

And when you thread the GT3 RS along these roads, you can see what he means. It is such a compelling piece of kit. It oozes precision and engineering feel in the purest way. Or, at least, the purest way a modern car is allowed to.  I suspect you’d feel more alive still in a 997-generation 911 GT3 RS 4.0. And although, yes, it’s firm and low enough to ground its front splitter (sensibly, made from flexible rubber, not brittle carbonfibre), it’s not so harsh as to be overly unruly, even on the poorest roads, where the 488 would more easily cast imperfections aside. And it’s narrower, visibility is better, throttle response is electric and its  PDK dual-clutch automatic gearbox is almost as good as the Ferrari’s transmission. Drive it on these roads and the gap between them – a single point when we left Snetterton – doesn’t get any bigger at all.

Then there’s the Nomad – as different as you could ask for but no less compelling and engaging for it. If it were just silly – if its outlandish looks and an ability to turn around anywhere you wanted without grounding its front and rear – were all it had going for it, it’d be easy to dismiss here. But even without the adjustable shocks that you can specify to make the Nomad’s suspension even more trick, across challenging roads it worms its way into your affections not just through sheer force of will but because there is genuine dynamic ability beneath it. It’s just that it’s not the conventional dynamic ability that we’re used to. Yet body control is truly exceptional, the ride is sublime and it steers with true mechanical precision and feedback like no other car here. Its responses are impeccably linear, too. Its engine zings, not unattractively, although it’s the delivery rather than the sound that makes it, and the manual gearshift is as crisp as they come. Could it really come first?

It could, because any of them could win it, but ultimately the nods from our judges don’t go that way. The Ferrari is simply too astonishing to overlook. Too docile, too impeccable in its road and track manners. Its gearshift is too fast and smooth, its brakes too indefatigable, its ride too composed and its handling just too damned compelling to overlook. Every one of our four judges decided that it was The One.

Two and three were harder to split. If you had a modern estate car as a daily driver and could choose either of these alongside it to drive until this contest comes around next year, to make a convincing argument that it should be a Nomad, rather than a car developed with all the might and intent of Weissach behind it, you would really have to believe it. I do, but our other judges did not. Not quite. There’s enough doubt that the Nomad is not for everyone, and that a GT3 RS is so dominant on a circuit, the traditional realm of a driver’s car, that the Porsche gets the nod.

The official order, then, goes 488 GTB in first, then 911 GT3 RS, then Nomad. The fact that I’m the person writing this last section and have deliberately wrapped up the verdict early, though, is for a reason: to tell you that if you are in the unlikely position of choosing one, and only one, of these, and you think the Nomad could be that car, do it. You won’t regret it for a nanosecond.

Read the rest of Britain's best driver's car 2015:

Introduction

Part one: Audi RS3 and Mercedes-AMG GT S

Part two: Lotus Evora 400, Mazda MX-5 2.0 Sport and Mercedes-AMG C63 S

Part three: Lamborghini Aventador SV and Porsche Cayman GT4